Sharing Student Projects

This study was done as current national educational policy regarding moral development is limited in guidance regarding how schools could support moral development, therefore this study aimed to explore the relationship between adolescents’ perception of their school’s moral atmosphere and how important they personally think showing moral behaviours is. This study seeks to contribute to wider academic discussions surrounding moral education by providing empirical data regarding adolescents’ perception of their school’s indirect moral messaging. The target population for the study were older adolescents, aged 16-18 years old. This age group were selected due to this group being able to reflect on their full time at secondary school, and also due to adolescence being identified as an important period for the emergence of moral identity. 12 participants took part in an online survey with 51 questions. These questions asked them to rate on a 5-point scale, where 1=Strongly Disagree and 5= Strongly Agree, how much they agreed with statements about their approach to different situations and also about their perceptions of their school. Participants were recruited through social media groups on Facebook and via the social media application TikTok. Participants were also recruited via initial participants distributing the survey to other people within the target population. This study found that there was no significant relationship between rating of school moral atmosphere and moral identity. The data showed a moderate negative relationship between perception of social relations within school and moral integrity. These findings indicate that adolescents who rate the social relations within their secondary school lower are expected to have higher moral integrity scores. This goes against previous research that found a positive relationship between similar variables of moral competency and social relationships. However, it should be considered that the participants in this study all experienced significant disruption to their learning during the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This may have affected to their rating of their school moral atmosphere, as they may have had brief periods of online learning along with less consistent access to their regular physical school environments. Replications of this study could adopt a mixed methods approach, with the use of the two measures in this study and also interviewing participants to explore how they perceive their school moral atmosphere in the aftermath of the peak of the pandemic compared to prior to the pandemic.

I think teachers and adolescents would benefit from this research. As discussed in the literature review, there is a lot of freedom, but also lack of clarity regarding best practises for provision for moral development within schools. From the findings of this study, I would highlight one key point for educators to consider within their classrooms and wider school. The findings of this study suggests that adolescents’ perception of social relations and sense of community within the school decreases if they place a higher value on acting in a way that is consistent with their personal moral values. This may indicate that adolescents’ feel that their personal moral values may not align with the moral atmosphere promoted by their school as an institution and as a community. Educators could adopt aspects of the Just Community approach to engage with their older pupils to discuss their moral values and what has contributed to these values being internalised. This may be achieved within classrooms through supported moral discussions between pupils and between pupils and teachers (Boheim et al., 2021), and also within the wider school environment through allowing pupils to help shape school ethos’ and behaviour codes. For adolescents, this study is impactful through acknowledging the value of their perspectives on their school environment. The School Moral Atmosphere Questionnaire emphasises that adolescents are engaged and important social actors within their school environment, therefore their perspectives are valuable to consider when considering non-academic educational policy that aims to support their personal development. Additionally, the findings could be interpreted as schools not having an impact on adolescents’ moral development. Further research using qualitative methods could provide an insight into what institutions or aspects of society adolescents feel contribute to their moral development, which then could be reflected in changes to current guidance for moral development provision in schools and wider socio-political discussion regarding adolescents and their morality.